The Presidency of Donald J. Trump, Episode VI: No Witnesses, One Defector, No Checks or Balances

https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1212593511557685249?s=19

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https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1212730938683207682
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The Russian-drafted resolution was approved by the 193-member world body by a vote of 79-60 with 33 abstentions.

U.S. deputy ambassador Cherith Norman Chalet told the assembly before the vote that “this resolution will undermine international cooperation to combat cyber-crime at a time when enhanced coordination is essential.”

“There is no consensus among member states on the need or value of drafting a new treaty,” she said. “It will only serve to stifle global efforts to combat cybercrime.”

Chalet and the Finnish representative speaking for the European Union both stressed that the U.N.’s existing intergovernmental expert group on cybercrime is already tackling the question of whether a new treaty is needed.

″Ït is wrong to make a political decision on a new treaty before cybercrime experts can give their advice,” Chalet said, adding that the resolution “prejudges” and “will undermine” the experts’ work.

He seems to be laying the groundwork for pardons.

It’s either pardons or locking up people from the previous administration.

Of those two options, pardons are the easiest and therefore the most likely. He has absolute power over them. That is not true for jailing people.

https://twitter.com/nickmartin/status/1212378740476395521?s=19

He was a featured speaker at Charlottesville who also happened to pen the tenants for the movement.

Cliffs: wegothim.gif

https://twitter.com/gregpinelo/status/1212706038018912259?s=19

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In 2018, Florida Man issued an executive order to create a postal task force, led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. The group was charged with figuring out how to make the postal service a more profitable entity. They recommended that the agency roll back collective bargaining rights for postal workers and sell off pieces of the service to private industry.

Once again the people most hurt by Republican policies will be Republican voters. Those rural middle-of-nowhere small-government devotees are gonna be pissed to learn that it now costs 10x as much for them to mail their Christmas cards and that they only get mail once a week because UPS thinks it’s a huge pain in the ass to service them.

What will end up happening is these private companies will cut back on service to rural communities, because ldo. These communities will complain. Republican politicians representing these communities will raise a stink about discrimination against conservatives. Congress will pass laws continuing to subsidize rural postal service, but now these subsidies are going straight to the bottom line of private corporations. No one will call out the hypocrisy.

There is no reason why the post office needs to be a profitable institution. None whatsoever. It is a government agency providing a service to all citizens equally.

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https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1212755670191222785?s=19

This is true, but it can be a nice boost to fiscal sustainability for a government owned enterprise (“crown corporation” in the Canadian terms) to run in the black. Ontario has run profitable crown corporations in, for example, energy generation and distribution. I would certainly argue that it’s preferable to have these entities run profitably by the government with a net positive to the bottom line of the province/state/etc., rather than having the government give a profitable monopoly to private interests.

You don’t know anything about the US Postal Service do you?

Sure it would be nice if the Postal Service could cover itself, but it doesn’t need to. We’ve decided as a country that we’re better off having a functioning postal service that doesn’t gouge rural communities, and we should embrace that decision and allow our tax dollars to support it, same as any other public good.

If we want to decide that an accessible postal service is no longer necessary as a society, fine–but let’s make that the decision rather than hiding behind some faux concern over profitability.

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Does nothing now matter to the point that the executive branch can gut the USPS without any Congressional input at all?